by Bob Woodward
Secretary of State Tillerson was on the National Event Conference and declared, “North Korea is out of control.”
South Korea wanted to respond with at least a visible bombing training exercise within their borders. The next day, the South Koreans flew a unilateral F-15 bombing training mission delivering munitions on a South Korea bombing range about 20 kilometers from the North Korean border.
Mattis could see the maximum military pressure was not being felt or seen by the North. He began looking for more aggressive response options and wondered if they should take some actual bombing action in a North Korean port to send the message.
One of Mattis’s favorite books was historian Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August on the causes of World War I. Nations in Europe had all made elaborate plans for war, but none had actively sought war. In 1914 the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia, set off the chain of events that triggered the war. By its end in 1918 more than 16 million soldiers and civilians had been killed.
What chain of events with the North might trigger war? Mattis pondered.
The intelligence gathering leading to the alerts was no less than spectacular, in a special category called “exquisite collection.” Mattis often knew within seconds of a launch. Computers would quickly determine where the missile would land. It took time to answer some of the key questions. Did the missile have a warhead? Was it a test? An attack?
The National Event Conferences became smoother and more orderly. The training was paying off—no U.S. military radar failure, no failure of other equipment. “Ready to fire,” Mattis heard each time. It was click, click, click, click, click, click. Then they would all stand by and wait. Is this what the edge of Armageddon might be like?
* * *
If there was a warning of a missile about to be fired, Mattis would often sign on to the National Event Conference early. Even if the trajectory indicated it was not coming toward the United States or was short-range, he would stay on the network to listen anyway. It became his own drill, what he called “anticipatory planning,” for his role as sentinel, perhaps as decision maker to shoot down the missile. What would he say or order—if?
“Don’t think that you can deal with this when the time comes,” he told himself. “Sort it out now. Worst-case scenario. And now it’s time to go to church. Now, go back, dust off the war plans and study it. Are we missing something? Is there something else we can do?”
On September 4, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test. It was estimated to have 17 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, and many scientists concluded it was a hydrogen bomb.
Five days later, September 9, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford summoned the senior military leaders to the Tank, their conference room in the Pentagon. Dunford told General Brooks that they were looking for military options to ratchet up pressure and were worried that the United States was heading straight into war with North Korea.
On September 22, Trump tweeted: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!”
The following day, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho called Trump “Mr. Evil President” in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly and said a strike on the U.S. mainland was inevitable. Trump responded later that day with another tweet: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”
The rhetorical overkill seemed mindless to Mattis. He believed that ridicule and taunting was unproductive, childish and dangerous.
“I got over enjoying public humiliation by second grade,” Mattis once told the president.
Trump did not respond, but continued the tweeting.
On issue after issue, policy after policy, Mattis believed there were ways for a president to be tough and keep the peace. “But not with the current occupant. Because he doesn’t understand. He has no mental framework or mode for these things. He hasn’t read, you know,” he told an associate.
Reading, listening, debating and having a process for weighing alternatives and determining policy were essential, Mattis believed. “I was often trying to impose reason over impulse. And you see where I wasn’t able to, because the tweets would get out there.”
On September 25, the U.S. command flew a simulated air attack, sending B-1 bombers and some 20 other planes, including cyber-capable aircraft, to cross the Northern Limit Line that separated South and North Korea in the sea. The planes stopped short of entering into North Korean territorial airspace or over North Korea itself, but it was an extremely provocative action. The South Korean National Security Council met with President Moon Jae In and sent word that the United States may have gone too far with North Korea.
Details of these provocative actions were not explained publicly, and the American people had little idea that July through September of 2017 had been so dangerous.
* * *
One day in his Pentagon office, Mattis addressed his senior staff sitting around the table head-on. “It can seem like routine here, gentlemen. And if you’re not concerned about war, well, war is very concerned about you. And if you’re not attentive to this, no one is.”
Mattis believed there had been significant accomplishments at the Pentagon under Trump: dramatic increases in military budgets, readiness, training, discipline and new weapons.
But he had a central, running argument with Trump concerning allies. Mattis saw that the Europeans in NATO, the Middle East, South Korea and Japan were essential. The relationships needed to be nurtured and protected.
“All the victories,” he said, “were becoming just submerged by this mercurial, capricious tweeting form of decision making.”
What, Mattis wondered, made Trump think anyone could make it alone in the world? What reading of history, what intellectual thought could give a person any confidence in that? A country always needed allies, he was sure. A person always needed allies. And this was the tragedy of Trump’s leadership and the bottom line: “It was inexplicable to think otherwise. It was indefensible. It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism.”
Trump’s impact on the country would be lasting. “This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements. Nobody believes—even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.”
When he walked out of his last visit to the cathedral, Mattis had cleared the decks. “I’m ready to go to work. I’m not going to think any more about the human tragedy.” If he were alive after such a war, he would sort it out in retirement at his boyhood home in Richland, Washington, on the banks of the Columbia River.
* * *
President Trump said many times in public that he averted war with North Korea by meeting with Kim. He told me that Kim anticipated such a war with the United States.
“He was totally prepared,” Trump told me on December 13, 2019.
“Did he tell you that?” I asked.
“Ah, yes, he did,” Trump said.
“He did?”
“He was totally prepared to go,” Trump replied. “And he expected to go. But we met.”
In our December 30, 2019, interview, Trump again claimed credit. “If I weren’t president, we would have—perhaps it would be over by now, and perhaps it wouldn’t—we would’ve been in a major war,” he said.
But in February 2020, the thought apparently still gave him pause. “It would’ve been a bad war, too,” he told me. “It would’ve been a rough war.”
DNI Dan Coats, who oversaw the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, said, “We all knew we were on the road to conflict.”
Kim told CIA director Pompeo the same in their first meeting—that he was ready to go to war. “We were very close,” Kim told Pompeo.
“We never knew whether it was real,” Pompeo later told an associ
ate, “or whether it was a bluff.” Whatever the case, the U.S. had to be ready.
TWELVE
General Vincent Brooks, the U.S.-South Korea commander, met with Rex Tillerson in South Korea on November 7. The secretary of state had flown in in advance of Trump’s first visit to South Korea.
Brooks knew that Tillerson had zero credibility with North Korea. Trump had undermined his secretary of state with a tweet a month earlier, writing that Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex.” Intelligence picked up from the North was clear: If this person isn’t speaking for the president, we don’t need to waste our time with him.
Mattis and Tillerson had failed to convince Trump that South Korea was making a significant contribution to its own defense. The president wouldn’t budge. Brooks was going to try illustrating the point by taking Trump to Camp Humphreys, the massive base the South Koreans had built for the joint American and South Korean forces.
After Trump landed around 12:30 p.m. and had lunch with troops at Osan Air Base, Brooks joined him in Marine One and they took off for Camp Humphreys. As they flew, Brooks pulled out a map of the base, showing Trump how it had tripled in size from the old base and could house 46,000 military and civilians. He had superimposed the base map over a map of Washington to give Trump a sense of scale. The base stretched from Key Bridge to Nationals Park, about four miles.
South Korea had spent about $10 billion of their own money on the base, Brooks said.
“Hmm,” Trump said, “that’s a lot of money.”
Brooks said the South Koreans had covered 92 percent of the cost.
“Why didn’t they pay for all of it?”
U.S. law required that the United States control and pay for all the sensitive communications equipment and for the SCIFs, Brooks said. The work had to be done by U.S.-cleared contractors and through a U.S.-controlled procurement process. Without those legal restrictions, South Korea probably would have paid 100 percent.
Brooks took the president on an aerial tour of the giant base, pointing to the map of D.C. for references as Marine One swung from points corresponding with Arlington Cemetery, to Key Bridge, around toward the White House, down to the Capitol and Nationals Park and back to the Jefferson Memorial before landing.
Trump and Brooks moved from the helicopter to the Beast, the presidential limousine.
Trump noticed some AH-64 Apache combat helicopters. “Are those ours?”
“Yes, Mr. President. That’s a battalion of about 18.” South Korea had just purchased two battalions’ worth and the U.S. had added a second battalion of its own. A year ago there had only been one battalion of Apache helicopters in South Korea, and now there were four.
“Are they any good?”
“There’s no greater killer,” Brooks said.
Trump indicated his approval.
After meeting with President Moon and some U.S. and South Korean troops, Brooks guided Trump to Eighth Army headquarters, where he hauled out some charts illustrated with candy gumballs to show the composition of the force.
Each gumball represented 10,000 troops, he said. Under current conditions, the United States had three gumballs, and South Korea had 62. In a time of war, after 200 days to fully mobilize, the United States would have a force of 720,000, according to the war plans, and the South Koreans 3.37 million.
Brooks hoped the stark difference in gumballs would show South Korea was carrying more than its share of the load.
Hmm, Trump said.
Brooks said that South Korea had spent $460 billion in its own defense in the last 15 years, and would soon spend $13.5 billion more on additional arms such as unmanned aerial systems missiles and fighter aircraft from U.S. defense industries.
“We will find out how serious North Korea is,” Trump said to Brooks. “We’re playing about five different games simultaneously. If we can’t make a deal, we have to be ready.”
They flew to Seoul with Tillerson, White House chief of staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster, passing over a large campus with three tall glass buildings.
“What’s that?” Trump asked.
“Samsung,” Brooks said. The electronics and cell phone manufacturing giant accounted for about 15 percent of the South Korean economy. The campus was so big it was actually known as Samsung Town in Seoul.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Trump said. “This is a rich country. Look at these high-rises. Look at the highway infrastructure.” A train passed underneath. “Look at that train! Look at all of this. We’re paying for all of this. They should be paying for everything.”
It’s our presence that led to that wealth, Brooks said, trying to push back. The South Koreans bear our DNA in the way they operate as a capitalistic democracy and in their military doctrine, customs and protocols. This economy, and South Korea itself, is an example of what can happen with a determined relationship and alliance over time. The connection went deeper than any individual military, diplomatic or economic transaction.
On the flight Trump asked Brooks, Should I go to Panmunjom? He was referring to the Joint Security Area (JSA) at the former village of Panmunjom at the DMZ that marks the border between South and North Korea.
Yes, Brooks said, making an on-the-spot call. You should go.
Before Trump’s trip, Mattis had warned Brooks not to do anything to endanger the president. “Do not take him to the JSA,” Mattis had ordered. Brooks hoped Mattis would understand he was acting in the tradition of the commander on the scene overriding orders. Trump should see what the South Koreans needed the U.S. to help defend, and Brooks thought he could keep the president safe by keeping the plan as secret as possible.
Why should I go? the president asked.
You would look weak if you didn’t, Brooks answered. The trip would add weight to his speech the next day before the National Assembly of South Korea.
The White House sent word to Brooks that night that the president wanted to go to the DMZ early the next morning before his speech. Brooks sent an ALERT—a header Mattis had asked his commanders to use for an immediate operational matter—to the secretary of defense: “ALERT: POTUS team notified us today POTUS decided to visit the DMZ.”
The next morning, Trump boarded Marine One. The fog was heavy but the pilots thought the route was navigable. The riskiest part was the landing area at Panmunjom, which involves a sharp 90-degree turn in the DMZ. Getting it wrong would mean the president could be in North Korea.
About 20 minutes into the flight, the pilots were taking it slow at about 3,000 to 4,000 feet. It was pea soup outside. The president had already had two Diet Cokes.
“They know I’m coming, don’t they?” Trump asked.
Mr. President, we don’t have any intelligence that would indicate that the North Koreans know you’re coming, Brooks said.
“I got up this morning,” Trump said, “and told Melania, kissed her goodbye, and said, ‘I might not see you again.’ It’s not that I’m worried about myself,” Trump added. “If something were to happen to the president of the United States, it would be the worst thing that could happen to us as a country.”
Suddenly Marine One made a hard left bank and went into a loiter, holding in place. After a few minutes, the military aide slid his hand abruptly across his throat.
“We’re turning around,” John Kelly said. “We can’t get in. It’s too thick.”
“This is terrible,” Trump said. “I’ve got to get in. But I know I can’t. I know you guys have got to make the decision. You’ve got to make a safety decision. I got it. This is horrible. This is going to be terrible.” He worried that the news coverage would be about him turning back and not making it to the DMZ. “This is going to make us look weak.”
Marine One landed safely and Trump went into the Beast. They waited a while to see if there would be a break in the weather so they could try again. Others could see Trump through the Beast’s windows. There was a
n obvious rant happening inside the vehicle.
Brooks had a chance to speak briefly with McMaster while they waited. As senior Army officers, they had known each other a long time.
How are you? Brooks asked.
“I got to get a new flak vest,” McMaster joked.
What do you mean?
“This one’s got so many holes in it just from my day-to-day activities that I’m going to have to get a new flak vest.”
The weather never cleared, and the trip was called off.
Trump later gave a rousing 35-minute speech to the South Korean National Assembly. Matt Pottinger, then serving as the National Security Council’s senior director for Asian Affairs, was elated. There’s never been a speech like that, he believed, though it was also reminiscent of a speech Reagan had once given in Korea. It was Trump’s Morning in South Korea. He called the economic, cultural and political awakening there “the Korean Miracle”—an economy 40 times that of North Korea.
Trump could not resist, “Since my election exactly one year ago today, I celebrate with you. The United States is going through something of a miracle itself. Our stock market is at an all-time high.” He cited low unemployment and a new “brilliant Supreme Court Justice,” referring to Neil Gorsuch, whom he had nominated January 31.
He waved the big stick at North Korea. “Currently stationed in the vicinity of this peninsula are the three largest aircraft carriers in the world, loaded to the maximum.”
He added, “We have nuclear submarines appropriately positioned.”
The obsessive golfer said, “The Women’s U.S. Open was held this year at Trump National Golf in Bedminster, New Jersey, and it just happened to be won by a great Korean golfer.”
